Your small business can have ten or more goals for the year but your employees need to know your priorities for the goals. You need to inform your employees of the highest priority tasks frequently. It is the only way to hold them accountable and ensure the team accomplishes the goals.
Set Priorities for Your Team and Communicate Them Often
Communicate Your Priorities Frequently
This is a very difficult Rule to master. How do you know the priorities?
I worked for a boss that established 18 different goals that my team needed to accomplish for the year. I asked him what was the highest priority of the 18 goals. He answered that they all were the highest priority. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. We only have so much time in a day, week, month, etc.
As a small business owner, you can’t set 5 goals at the beginning of the year and expect that everything will go smoothly across all 5 goals. You have to constantly review the progress the business is making on the goals. During these reviews you need to communicate your priorities across whatever goals have been set. Your employees will work on whatever they believe is a priority. Don’t have them guess about priorities. Communicate your priorities frequently.
You will get feedback if someone thinks your priorities and plan won’t work. Then you are in the drivers seat. You can simply asks, “OK, what do you think should be a priority?”. This engagement will create buy-in on the goals and your priorities. That buy-in should translate into higher productivity across your small business.